ON HAVING A MISSIONARY FIELD.

For the Panoplist.

EVERY man acquainted with himself well knows how frequently his strongest resolutions are broken, and how much nobler was the appearance presented to his own imagination by his schemes of great exertion, when first projected, than that which is seen in their accomplishment. I cannot well conceive, that a man of ordinary sensibility should compare the actual amount of his labors with the anticipa tions which cheered his opening prospects, and not suffer many painful recollections. In the general apathy of most men, the natural aversion to labor, the selfishness which will not move a finger beyond its own narrow circle, or perhaps in a combination of all the three, is found an insurmountable obstacle to the performance of those great works of beneficence, to which every Christian should feel him self solemnly bound to contribute his ready assistance. A clear perception of this lamentable weakness in our nature, has induced some minds of the first order, to confine themselves to established rules of daily employment, and also to appropriate certain sums most sacredly to works of beneficence.

I shall briefly mention a few of the advantages of such an appropriation, particularly in regard to the bestowment of those charities, which are expended far from the residence of the donor.

Nothing is better known than the fact, that a claim which is seldom brought before us is easily forgotten. This neglect is not confined to the legal transactions of business; but even our dearest friends experience the unhappy effects of our forgetfulness. But where the demand of our assistance is not enforced by legal sanctions, nor urged by the endearments of personal friendship, the probability of neglect is so strong, that some memorial is absolutely necessary to remind us of a duty we have perhaps solemnly resolved to perform. On account of this easy neglect of a charity, whose object is removed beyond the circle of our daily walks, some method should be adopted by the friends of missions to keep constantly before their minds the cries of the heathen world, and their irresistible claims on the compassionate assistance of every disciple of Jesus Christ. I know several measures have been proposed for raising charitable funds; but none has come within my observation promising so much success, as that of laying aside, at stated intervals, some portion of our earnings, or devoting a specific part of our time solely to this object.

As so large a proportion of our citizens are engaged in agriculture, the direct and easy method for them to raise a certain sum annually for missionary purposes, will be to select a spot of cultivated land, and consecrate all its products to the design of sending the Gospel to the destitute. Some of the advantages of such a measure are the following:

1. The very act of appropriation would remind the laborer, that what he calls his own is in truth the property of God; that he is put in trust with a certain share of worldly possessions, as a steward or tenant at will, and will be required to render an exact account of his

administration, and to surrender the whole, at the summons of the Great Proprietor.

2. All men, as hinted above, are very liable to forget a well known duty, and also to forget it soon. This sinful forgetfulness of acknowled truths, is one essential occasion of preaching the Gospel continually where it is already generally known. The plainest truths must be often repeated. Now if a certain part of each man's employment were a particular labor for the express intention of promoting Christianity, it would often, in the happiest manner, call his attention to the subject. It would lead him to examine the evidences of his piety, and the motives of his actions.

5. This selected spot, cultivated by his own hands, and its products devoted to God, as an acknowledgment for his goodness, might serve to renew his gratitude. While considering the amount as pledged to the heathen, he might naturally consider the value of an immortal soul, and the unspeakable excellence of the salvation offered in the Gospel.

4. Especially would this measure serve to remind the laborer of the universal connexion between the end and the means. In his agricultural operations, he observes how soon a neglected field produces thorns and briars, but that no good fruit is ever expected without incessant toil. A small acquaintance with mankind may teach him, that the heathen, if left to themselves, will never be gathered into the Redeemer's kingdom,-never produce the fruits of righteousness; and that unless the good seed of the word of God be sown among them, no harvest will rise to life eternal. While the husbandman is forcibly taught his dependence on divine providence for all successful operations; while he sees that without the seasonable supplies of rain and sunshine from heaven, no harvest rewards his toil;-why should not his mind instantly advert to the lessons of experience concerning the culture of the heart? He sees abundant proof every day, that notwithstanding the highest external advantages, no forms of religion can change the stubborn soil of the human heart, without the interposition of the Creator and Redeemer; but that it remains, under all the varieties of place and time, a barren vineyard producing the wild grapes of Sodom. Let him learn in the midst of his laborious exertions, to pray earnestly for the refreshing influences of the Holy Spirit, to descend on himself, his family, his country, and the world.

5. If a man clings fast to the opinion, that all the money he can possibly scrape together is so exclusively his own, that not a cent is to be liberated from his grasp, except on the demand of pure selfishness;-if he will not allow the Great Giver of all his possessions a right to call for a portion to be employed for His glory and the diffusion of his Gospel;-if he will not acknowledge, not only the wealth entrusted to his care, but even his own self, to be the entire and absolute property of Jehovah, a property to be accounted for to the Supreme Proprietor, then, indeed, he cannot be supposed very ready to open his hand to support the institutions of Christianity either at home or abroad. But let not such a man any longer pretend to be a disciple of the Savior. Let him no more exhibit the shameful incon. sistency of professing himself a convert to a religion, whose first

command is, that the heart be given to God; whose unalterable laws require the doing good to all as he has opportunity,-and which was announced in the angelic song of Peace on earth and good will to men."

AGRICOLA.

For the Panoplist.

ON A MINISTER'S INTERCOURSE WITH HIS PEople.

In all periods of the Christian church, it is vastly important to the interests of religion, that ministers of the Gospel should enforce, by their daily intercourse with mankind, the great truths, which it is their duty to preach on the Sabbath. This is peculiarly the case at the present day, when activity holds almost the first place in pastoral qualifications. The minister, who is much in company with members of his congregation;-who sees them often at their houses, and at social religious meetings; who confers with them in private, and in a more public and promiscuous manner; who visits them in prosperity and in affliction, through a long course of years;-cannot but exert a very considerable influence in the formation of their character. He is doing more than he is probably aware of, either to quiet their consciences in sin, and harden their hearts against religion, or to awaken them to a life of righteousness, assist them in their spiritual warfare, and speed them in their progress towards heaven. The conduct of ministers, in their common intercourse with the world, is probably more various, than the doctrines which they publicly preach. I would solicit the reader's attention to the description of a few classes of persons, who sustain the clerical character. Some of these classes contain but a few individuals; but as they actually exist in our country at present, they ought not to be omitted.

To begin with the lowest class, (and a lower and more degraded class of human beings can hardly be named,) there are some unhappy men, professing to be ministers of the Gospel, and pretending to preach from Sabbath to Sabbath, who prostitute whatever talents they possess to purposes of buffoonery; and who seem to think their whole object accomplished, if they can excite a laugh at serious things, and banish from the minds of their followers all dread of a hereafter. It is not to be supposed, that he, who is a mountebank in the pulpit, can be any thing worse out of it; or that having ridiculed the most solemn and awful truths of the Bible in the most public manner, he can have either the disposition or the ability to do any good to his fellow creatures, by his ordinary conversation and example. On this class of professed teachers I have only to say, that the mere existence of such a class is a sufficient commentary on a certain favorite dogma of some people, which asserts, that simply claiming to be a Christian minister must be considered absolute proof of ministerial character. Lamentable, indeed, is the state of things, when a person of the stamp here described can obtain countenance, support and a crowded house. How desperately in love with perdition must those unthinking creatures be, who seek their gratification in listening to profane ribaldry, in a temple professedly dedicated to the service of

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the Most High, and on a day set apart for his peculiar service. A second class of ministers is composed of men, who sustain a character of decency and respectability, and wish to be consistent members of a grave and dignified profession. Into this profession they entered from merely worldly motives, and guided by calculations of mere secular advantage, just as they would have entered into commerce, the law, or any other profession, which might have suited their taste, or offered sufficient inducements to their ambition. The public performances of such persons may be far removed from levity; but their private conversation is not apt to possess the least tincture of religion. They never introduce any serious subject; and, when introduced by others, they know not what to say. A lady, who had such a minister for her religious instructor, declared, that whenever he visited her family, he never said any thing more solemn, or more nearly approaching religion, than that her children were "almost large enough to attend the dancing school." A clergyman of this sort, when declining of a consumption, was observed to spend his Sabbaths in reading French plays; and, as he mixed with society, only a few weeks before his decease, he neither did nor said any thing, which would cause a spectator to suppose, that he was either a minister, or a Christian. A man of wealth, in one of our large towns, who had been worldly minded and active in the pursuit of property, and had enjoyed that respectability which property and successful industry give, declared upon his death-bed, that he had belonged for thirty-five years to a certain religious congregation; that he had occasionally invited the clergy to his house; but that not one of them had ever said a single word to him on the subject of religion. There is no doubt, melancholy as the fact may be, that a considerable number of those who enter into the sacred office, wish to be merely decent and respectable men of the world, when out of the pulpit. They prefer worldly company; they not only relish worldly enjoyments, but appear to have no relish for any other; their presence, when their character is fairly known, puts worldly men under no sort of restraint. They do nothing to excite a reverence for serious things. Their whole influence produces the conviction in the minds of beholders, that this world is all, and the world to come nothing.

A third class is composed of men, who are very considerably elevated above the one last mentioned. They preach with seriousness and earnestness; appear to be actuated by conscientious motives; and behave, during the week, with the most circumspect gravity. Their example gives no countenance to lightmindedness or frivolity. They are cheerful, yet sober and chastened, in their conversation; exact in the discharge of relative duties; kind and affable in their manners; and regarded by the more decent class of worldly men, as perfect models of clerical excellence. Yet they never introduce the topic of religion, however favorable the occasion, and however retired and free from interruption, in such a manner as to press the conscience, and alarm the sinner, or comfort the believer. They discover no fondness for social prayer, but rather decline it. When passing through the country, they seem to wish their public character to be VOL. XVI.

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concealed. In the whole course of their ministry, in the pulpit and in private, they discountenance revivals of religion, and all extraor dinary exertions to extend the kingdom of the Redeemer. Notwithstanding all their gravity, they hang as a dead weight upon the church. They will not even be able to raise up successors of as much seriousness as themselves possess; and, as to spiritual religion, it withers and perishes under their ministrations.

A fourth class have made greater advances towards a correct and consistent ministerial character. They preach faithfully and pungently, as well as seriously and earnestly. They shun not to declare the whole counsel of God. They attend many religious meetings beside on the Sabbath; are ready in prayer and exhortation; appear alive in religion; converse freely and promptly on religion, when there is any thing to call forth their exertions. But their principal deficiency lies in this: their religious conversation does not seem to flow forth spontaneously and abundantly, but waits to be prompted by the solicitations of others, or by some peculiar occasion. It seems to originate from a conviction of what ought to be done, rather than from a living, overflowing, perennial spring of love and grace in the heart. Hence it will be observed, that when these men are visited by friends, even by religious friends, their conversation sometimes runs the circuit of news, politics, literature, &c. before it touches upon those nobler subjects, in which all men are interested, and in which Christians should feel a constant interest. How unhappy the reflection, that men of piety and enlarged minds should meet and converse upon a great number of insignificant topics, and separate without exchanging a word respecting those great subjects, in which they have a deep personal concern, and on which the energies of heaven, earth, and hell, are expended. How much to be regretted is it, that persons well qualified to awaken the careless, guide the inquiring, enliven the dull, encourage the timid, and admonish the presumptuous, should let any opportunity of discharging these high duties pass without benefit to themselves and others.

The only remaining class which I shall mention, is composed of men, whose religion manifestly pervades their whole public and private character. In their family visits, in their occasional meetings with friends, in the large circle and the small circle, among intimate acquaintances and among strangers, in the retirement of their own families and abroad, they exhibit delightful evidence, that they are disciples of Christ; that they are employed about their heavenly Father's business; and that it is their pleasure, as well as their duty, to bear testimony perpetually to the efficacy of divine truth. I shall not be understood to mean, that they make themselves prominent in the eyes of those, into whose company they fall; or that they injudiciously obtrude the subject of religion upon others. All I intend is, that their circumspect conversation, their abstinence from even the appearance of evil, their prompt seizure of every avenue by which to communicate religious truth, their earnest desire to benefit the souls of men, their low estimate of worldly good compared with that which is permanent and everlasting, their habitual reference of all things to the judgment of the great day, and their steadfast looking toward